It consisted of mentally reaching into the victim's mind, forcing them to relive all the worst memories of their life, both painful ones and ones that were merely embarrassing, over and over and over again to the point where it almost seemed to cause physical pain. Interestingly, Gepta found that after a brief session of torture by chagrin, the subjects demonstrated a slight increase in intelligence and efficiency after they recovered. For this reason he used it regularly on the crew of his personal command ship, the Wennis.

When Gepta captured Lando Calrissian, he planned to use torture by chagrin to kill him. Half an hour of it and Lando was in pain like he'd never known before; Gepta believed he could make Lando last for several weeks before the gambler's mind finally snapped and he died. To make the process more personal, the Sorcerer of Tund had created a machine which would amplify his power and allow him to pick and choose which memories Lando would relive. The machine would also let Gepta alter the memories to be even worse than they were already.

Fortunately for Lando, a squadron of Renatasians attacked, distracting Gepta long enough for the gambler to execute a plan to escape.